11/04/2013 - Silvana Maja’s documentary, presented during the European film festival in Lecce follows lightly and painfully the lives of three women fighting cancer

What is the best way to speak about illness in cinema? To what point can a testimony of physical degeneration, the intimate pain and ripping apart of someone fighting cancer and death take us? These are the questions that come to mind while watching Silvana Maja’s (photo) documentary, Vita da non morire mai, presented in sneak preview at the Lecce European Film Festival (8-13 April) in the cinema and reality section.

Three women tell the story of their fight against cancer and take their clothes off in front of the director’s camera. They show their mutilated bodies, butchered by needles, the marks on their skin, their heads without hair. A punch to the stomach.

But Francesca, Silvana and Carla are no ordinary women for the filmmaker: one is her dear friend, another is her producer, and the last one still is her sister. Together, the four women hold each other’s hands and begin a journey starting in 2009 and ending in 2012. The epilogue is not a happy one. The road is long, full of fear, physical suffering, uncertainty, memories from the past, but also a lot of irony. 

“I gathered these stories in a light-hearted manner because I wanted to bear witness to these women’s will to live,” Maja explained. “There was trust and affection between us.” Francesca especially, who was terminally ill, must have had a lot of trust and affection in order to show herself in such a manner, without filters, her body devoured by cancer, even managing to smile. “She liked being filmed,” the director said, “she wanted to leave a testimony.” 

Illness can be an opportunity to transform yourself, to understand, and start again: this is what the film communicates. But it remains something ugly and bad, whether you recover or not. Your body falls apart and the documentary is there to tell that story. 

(Translated from Italian)